How to Use LinkedIn to Grow your Business

At the time of writing, there are 152 days left in 2022. How are your sales tracking against your business goals? If the honest answer is that you are stressed that not enough consistent leads are coming through to generate paying clients, then this newsletter is for you.

The B2B Buyer of Today

Businesses that do not adapt their sales process to suit the modern B2B buyer will be left behind. The B2B buying journey has changed significantly with quantity and quality information available at the buyer's fingertips. A good article that does a deeper dive into this changing landscape is "New B2B Buying Journey, and its Implication for Sales"( Gartner )

Personally, in my two decades of sales experience, I noticed in recent years that opportunities would come to me much later in the buying journey. Many clients had researched and easily compared vendors/products/services before reaching out to discuss with me. It became more conversations around assurance around their understanding and logistics eg price, timing etc

This applies across industries. It is also not limited to the size of the deal either. We see more and more the willingness of businesses to invest significant sums of money without having ever met anyone face to face from a sales team. I'm sad to say the advantage of salespeople being the only keepers of information is long gone.

It's not all doom and gloom. LinkedIn is THE platform to do business. Adapting your sales approach and incorporating social selling offers an abundance of opportunities.

What is Social Selling?

There are many definitions of Social Selling, but this one is the one that I like to use as it breaks down the process into steps. These steps are linear, do not try and skip one or rush the process. This is exactly where the promise of automation tools comes crashing down.

"The art of using?social?media to find, connect with, understand, and nurture sales prospects. It's the modern way to develop meaningful relationships with potential customers, so you're the first person or brand a prospect thinks of when they're ready to buy.”

Social Selling is an investment in your relationships, your brand (company and personal) and building out your thought leadership. It is not just consistency but also persistency over time. You can not force someone to be ready to buy but must be on the lookout for buying signals.

How to use LinkedIn for Business Development

If you aren't clear on how the process specifically works on LinkedIn, I'm not going to re-hash what was an amazing conversation on this topic I had recently with Richard van der Blom . We are both passionate advocates for Social Selling on LinkedIn, and it is a worthwhile investment of 30 mins of your time.

?? Podcast Episode - click here for links for all major podcast platforms. Subscribe ??

The discussion is just a taster, but if you want to know more about implementing the LinkedIn Social Selling process into your business, please look at the G.T.C. LinkedIn B2B Foundation Masterclass. I'll teach you proven LinkedIn Social Selling processes that I have refined over eight years, and you can learn in two hours!

How to Generate Consistent Leads on LinkedIn

Another great conversation I had recently was with Krista Mollion , and catching this replay is another investment in your business growth. We discuss in depth the importance of the nurture phase, which is something we are both 100% aligned with.

This critical phase of Social Selling is not something you can outsource and is where most of your activity on LinkedIn should be focused. If you aren't invested in building relationships, you aren't invested in building your business. What you have is a hobby.

RELATIONSHIPS CAN'T BE OUTSOURCED. Krista Mollion

There is no shortcut to building relationships. Put in the work and build your B2B community. Homework time - watch the replay of our discussion here or listen to the podcast (available on all major podcast platforms).

LinkedIn Social Selling Index Score (SSI)

LinkedIn has created a tool that will indicate how your Social Selling efforts are going compared to your team, industry and network. Before you get too concerned about your score, I recommend you take this with a grain of salt.

If you have LinkedIn Sales Navigator, the score will be higher than those that do not have it. The score is relative, and with everything on LinkedIn, I would not compare myself to others but rather look to improve my ranking.

It's not entirely clear how these scores are calculated, but if you build targeted relationships, have a strong commenting and content strategy and generally work on building your personal brand, the score will go up.

Find your LinkedIn Social Selling Index Score here - https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/social-selling/the-social-selling-index-ssi

If you have read this far and are still unsure how to use LinkedIn and Social Selling to grow your business, it's time to reach out.

I want to work with Ambitious, Innovative and Purpose Driven businesses and their teams to be ?Top of Mind,??First Choice,??Only Choice.

Book a time to find out how I can help your business with a free 15min intro call here.

Cheers ??

Michelle J Raymond

Michelle J Raymond is the?Chief LinkedIn Strategist?at B2B GROWTH CO - Grow Your B2B on LinkedIn and a founding member of the LinkedIn Small Business Advisory Council for LinkedIn Pages.?Michelle specialises in helping business owners make a real impact.?

As a leading global authority and best selling author on LinkedIn Pages, her passion is to change the world by doing good business with good people.